Parrot & Olivier in America by Peter Carey
381 pages
Published 2009
Read from January 9 to January 12
Rating: ★★★★½ out of 5
I
love literary fiction, and I don't. I love the idea of it, I love its
rhythm and melody, the delightful frolic of language used well. Yet I
know in my heart I have a hard time letting go of spells and rockethips.
I would call it a weakness of mine, but I know I'll get shouted down by
half a dozen fellow nerds who wish me to be proud of my geekdom. Nerd
culture is trendy enough these days without it needing my unwavering
allegiance, but it's 3 am and I'm in no state to belabor the point.
Suffice it to say that, as beautiful and eloquent as this book was, I
found myself bored in a few spots, wishing Carey would stop luxuriating
in words and images just this once and get to the point of the scene.
Now that the book is done and filling my head with its whiskey-warm instruments,
I find myself making a poor imitation of its cadence like a servant boy
in a distinguished house, and thinking a couple hundred more pages
would've been a treat. It helps that it was a historical narrative; a
book set in, say, modern Napa Valley would've got tossed aside ten pages
in. I need some element of the exotic in my fiction.
It
being 3 am, I'm not sure I have anything insightful to say about this
book. I liked it. I really liked it. Carey's prose is playful and
assured -- I wish to anatomize and taxonomize it, peeling its syllables
apart to reveal what makes it go. My own prose is a blunt instrument,
something to get the job done; I've always admired (but also shrank
from) the words of the eloquent, probably according their authors the
reverence and sour envy reserved for aristocracy. Set a literate book
before me and I feel like an urchin caught and turned out by his
betters. No doubt Parrot & Olivier's themes of democracy and
aristocracy have fogged my brain, but I can't help but draw the
parallel. I'm easily impressed by prose that does more than function.
It's a soft spot of mine.
My one gripe with the book is Carey's
occasional reference to democracy leading inevitably to the rule of an
"ignoramus." As much as I agree with his sentiments -- democracy is
always at the mercy of the stupid and the willfully ignorant -- such
asides always feel ham-fisted to me, instantly dating any work to the
early 21st century. Those thoughts do have a place in the themes of the
book, but I felt unsatisfied each time, my vanes ruffled.
I should shut up, because I can't not
write this way right now (like Parrot, I tend to imitate what I hear),
and I sound more like a carnival sharp or a common buffoon than I do a
master of refined English. To bed.
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